Amore dopo la Morte
by Saint Mirror
Summary: There's a special someone that Calleigh comes home to every night...


Disclaimer: I do not, in any way, own CSI: Miami or anything associated with it Disclaimer: I do not, in any way, own CSI: Miami or anything associated with it.

Amore dopo la morte

Calleigh expertly flipped the hall light switch on and pushed her soaking hair out of her eyes. A masculine chuckle of amusement floated down the hall, and she huffed in annoyance.

"I heard that, Tim, you might as well come out." About halfway down the hallway, a figure slowly flickered into view. Calleigh smiled, despite herself, at the ghost of Tim Speedle.

Eying her drenched figure, he gave the half-smile that had been so endearing in life and now sorrowfully so in death.

"So…still think it won't rain today?" Calleigh rolled her eyes at his question, knowing full well that he was gloating. Walking past him, she went down the hall to her bedroom where she sank onto the soft mattress with a relieved sigh. The day had been particularly rough.

The semi-transparent figure of Tim leaned against her bedroom door, obviously expecting a response. Sometimes Calleigh couldn't stand looking at him, his very appearance reminding her painfully of what she'd lost.

He was still dressed in the same dark blue shirt he'd died in, his hair mussed exactly the way it'd been that fateful day. She didn't know why he chose to torture her in such a way, but at least he was not callous enough to show the bloodstain that should have been spread all across his left side.

In the years following his departure – she absolutely refused to acknowledge his death when she saw him everyday – she often asked him why he chose to wear that outfit everyday. Always when she asked this, he would give that mysterious smile and shrug saying, "I've always liked this shirt." In life, Tim had been difficult, now he was impossible.

"Don't think that you can escape by getting lost in thought, Calleigh. I've got all the time in the world to wait for you." He couldn't know how much that hurt her so she turned her usual thousand-watt smile on him.

"I know, I know. I should have listened to you, Tim, but you know I was in a hurry this morning." She turned a mock glare on him.

"If someone hadn't turned off my alarm clock then we wouldn't be having this conversation." Tim shrugged his shoulders, the light from the hallway filtering through him and falling onto her bed.

She stared hard at the patch of light on her bed, almost willing his shadow to fill it though she knew it never again would. Something faintly warm brushed her cheek, and she looked up to see Tim crouched down and staring at her with an unreadable expression lurking in his dark eyes.

"Calleigh…" He didn't have to say much more than that; he knew she'd tell him what was on her mind. It had always been that way, ever since his death and his resulting supernatural residency with her, she had always told him her problems. All of them…except for one, this very one that he saw every time she looked through him.

Unshed tears shimmered in her eyes, but he knew they would never fall. She never displayed weakness even when it wasn't one. At length she looked down and began to speak in a low whisper.

"When you…left I…" She swallowed. "You remember how, when you first came around, you had to stay with me constantly? No matter where I went, you were there with me. It could be a crime scene, the locker room, you even had to sit on the toilet while I took showers." They both laughed at the last one but quickly sobered.

"But eventually I could handle not seeing you all the time, and you'd leave. Disappear somewhere. At first it'd only be for a little while until now I can go a whole day without seeing you." She paused and stared up at him, her hands twitching as if she had to control the almost uncontrollable urge to cup his face in them.

"I know what you're trying to do, Tim." His eyes - which had wandered in the silent interim – sought hers, but she kept them firmly locked on her bedspread.

"What are you talking about, Cal?" The hallway light showed something shiny running down Calleigh's cheeks and Tim was stunned to realize that they were tears. He leaned forward, almost unable to believe what his eyes were telling him. His Calleigh was crying.

"Cal?" With a suddenness that surprised both of them, she made a grab for his hands, belatedly remembering that she couldn't touch him when her hands hit the bedside table instead.

"Tim, I don't want you to go. Please don't." Her body was as still as his had ever been, the only thing denoting life in her was the silent tremor running through her.

He ached with the need to hold her but knew he never would again. Her soft blonde hair fell over her features, hiding her tears from him, but he could hear them just the same.

"Oh Cal…you know I can't stay here with you." A moan escaped her.

"Why not? Why can't you? You've been here for so long, I don't know why you're thinking of leaving now!" He wanted her to look at him, wanted her to know that he had never meant to hurt her by staying, but her pain had reached out to him, and it was all he could do for her, the woman he loved so desperately.

"Cal…you can't fall in love with me. I'm dead, Cal." He saw her whole body flinch at this but he continued ruthlessly.

"I can't come back, not ever, and you don't need to waste your life loving someone who can never give you what you really need." Calleigh brushed her hair out of the way and glared at him through tear-filled eyes.

"What I need is you, Tim. It's too late: I already love you, and you can't…wouldn't walk away from that." He broke eye contact, and if it was even possible, Calleigh's body stiffened even more.

"You wouldn't leave…would you? Tim, no…" He left her sobbing figure on the bed and walked down the hall.

He didn't know why he bothered going through the doorway when he could now just walk through the wall itself – a talent he'd dearly wished to have as a kid – but he supposed it had something to do with the weeping woman in the bedroom. He didn't want to ruin her delusion for some reason.

He allowed himself to do something he only usually did when she was either sleeping or at work: float. He rose to the ceiling but didn't allow his body – he laughed sardonically at himself - to pass through it. He did, however, allow himself to think about that day.

The events before and after his death stood in crystal clear clarity in his mind. The pain, his and Horatio's, the release death brought, Alexx sobbing over his corpse, the funeral. All of it, he remembered sorrowfully, but contently as well because he knew they would remember him still and yet move on with their lives.

Calleigh, though…he watched her for almost a week before deciding on the proper course of action to take. His greatest fear had been that she would not be willing to let him go once he was back again in her life, but at the time her pain had outweighed that risk, and he showed himself to her. Now his fear had been realized, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Speed studied his fingers thoughtfully, used to the way he could see every minute detail of his hand along with that of the ceiling.

"What I have is a choice. I could leave now and let Calleigh deal with it by herself." He paused, allowing that option to sink in. "Or…I could stay, probably until she dies, and face the probability that she will never move on and live her life." A normal life for her – that thing he wanted her to have but knew she never wanted with anyone but him – was almost unattainable now.

"Am I crazy, Tim?" He looked down and was surprised to see her staring up at him as if it were the most normal thing in the world. In her world – a place where one falls in love with ghosts who love you just as fiercely, but are too stubborn to admit the truth – it was. With a calm he didn't truly feel, he floated down to stand before her. She had changed into a flowing nightgown.

"Why would you be crazy, Cal?" She chuckled a little and went to sit on the couch. He followed, feeling not so much the loyal canine as the worried friend and lover.

"Oh I don't know, Tim. Maybe because I'm talking to a dead man who, in the years following his death, I've fallen wildly in love with, and he is now telling me I shouldn't love him because he wants to leave though he won't say why." He chuckled and sat beside her, brushing her fingers with his own; relishing the sight, as he couldn't the feeling.

"That is a little strange, Cal, but I think you have it all wrong." Her eyes roamed her neat little living room, refusing to look at the apparition beside her.

"How is it wrong?" Tim stretched, a living habit he had yet to kick.

"Well…what if the dead man said he didn't really want to leave because he also was wildly in love and had been since before his death, but he was only thinking of your happiness when he said he wanted to leave?" A sob caught in her throat, but she resolutely forced it down. She would not cry anymore that night.

A brush across her cheek, the same kind from earlier that night, had her looking at him. His dark eyes burned intense holes in her skin, a familiar tingle running through her as it always had when he gazed at her this way, living and now.

"I love you, Calleigh."

"Then stay with me." He sighed and laid his head in her lap, more to assuage the burning in his soul than for the minimal feeling he got from it. His decision had been made the moment she said she loved him.

"I love you too much to do anything else." The smile on her face as she slept assured him she had gotten the meaning he'd wanted her to get from that statement.

In the morning when she woke, she knew he had gone and would not be coming back.

-end-

A/N: This one's strange and not like anything else I've done I don't think. This is my first foray into this fandom so I hope it doesn't disappoint.


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